Sign if you would of Prefered this over the data Center shuffle

[SendohJin]

Few things one would be happy to tune out more than "our massively multiplayer online game isn't well equipped to allow a massive amount of players to play online together."

do other MMOs really not have servers (i've only played 4 in my life and everyone has them)? do they really have open world fields where you load 2000 players at the same time?

[Shurrikhan]

do other MMOs really not have servers (i've only played 4 in my life and everyone has them)? do they really have open world fields where you load 2000 players at the same time?

No, nor was that the point I was making.

But, many do allow (cross-server) connectivity between many more people than our Datacenters do, and especially will after the coming changes.

Their "Massively Multiplayer", for all intents and purposes, is more massive than ours, is all, in terms of how many people one sign-in/character can technically connect to insofar as servers/centers allow.

[Dyvid]

No, nor was that the point I was making.

But, many do allow (cross-server) connectivity between many more people than our Datacenters do, and especially will after the coming changes.

Their "Massively Multiplayer", for all intents and purposes, is more massive than ours, is all, in terms of how many people one sign-in/character can technically connect to insofar as servers/centers allow.

How data centers do the many MMO's have? How does their cross realm feature work? What are they doing that FFXIV isn't?

[Shurrikhan]

How data centers do the many MMO's have? How does their cross realm feature work? What are they doing that FFXIV isn't?

WoW. You can play with any player from any region through their realm visitation system. Guilds and standard matchmaking are still limited to Battlegroups, but you can play with all players.

BDO. All one data NA/EU data center. All character and clan data is stored separately from servers. You pick the server to log in on based on whichever has best ping at that particular time. Some events and bonuses set to particular servers to draw relevant players, but generally it's just a matter of additional/excess servers being made or crunched as needed for ping, with a graduated transition of some three seconds as your server or mini-server is crunched or split.

B&S. Crunched to one NA/Oceania server and one EU server, with cross-connectivity. (Russia, China, Japan, and Korean clients all wholly separate entities.) Channels are made/crunched similar to above for purposes of ping.

GW2. Now uses only mega-servers for all gameplay intents and purposes. NA or EU. Separate instances made/crunched as needed.

Playing on an NA server on any of these MMOs I have access to nominally 50+ to 100% of players playing the same game, worldwide.

[Dyvid]

WoW. You can play with any player from any region through their realm visitation system. Guilds and standard matchmaking are still limited to Battlegroups, but you can play with all players.

BDO. All one data NA/EU data center. All character and clan data is stored separately from servers. You pick the server to log in on based on whichever has best ping at that particular time. Some events and bonuses set to particular servers to draw relevant players, but generally it's just a matter of additional/excess servers being made or crunched as needed for ping, with a graduated transition of some three seconds as your server or mini-server is crunched or split.

B&S. Crunched to one NA/Oceania server and one EU server, with cross-connectivity. (Russia, China, Japan, and Korean clients all wholly separate entities.) Channels are made/crunched similar to above for purposes of ping.

GW2. Now uses only mega-servers for all gameplay intents and purposes. NA or EU. Separate instances made/crunched as needed.

Playing on an NA server on any of these MMOs I have access to nominally 50+ to 100% of players playing the same game, worldwide.

WoW, from what I read, has CRZ "Cross Realm Zoning" within in the data center as default. All others you mentioned use one Data Center. All those MMORPG automatically place you in a CRZ where as FFXIV's plan is to give players the choice to move to another world. SE isn't doing anything different, they are really just playing catch up.

[Shurrikhan]

WoW, from what I read, has CRZ "Cross Realm Zoning" within in the data center as default.

And?

WoW : Can visit and play with any server, from any data center.

XIV : Can visit and play with any server, only from within your own data center.

Are we really going to debate whether a sixth is greater than a whole? WoW objectively allows you to connect with a larger percentage of players. 100% > (12-%)

All others you mentioned use one Data Center.

Separate server sites. Except in BDO, full character data is bound to separate datacenters, just as described above. Dallas and Frankfurt, each with separate character registries, do not a single data-center make.

All those MMORPG automatically place you in a CRZ where as FFXIV's plan is to give players the choice to move to another world.

And? What makes that difference in fundamental tech somehow so... inherently flawed(?) that any reference to it or its benefits in terms of the percentage of playerbase you can connect to with a given character would be irrelevant or profane?

SE isn't doing anything different, they are really just playing catch up.

Then what do you have against the other designs? Or rather, what is your point? You asked how many data centers they had. I answered. You asked how their cross-realm feature worked. I answered. You asked what they're doing that XIV isn't. I answered. You have four at a glance examples of other ways to provide connection with a greater percentage of players from a single character. For what reason apart from "well, they aren't XIV" is each irrelevant, fundamentally or otherwise?

If XIV is finally playing catch-up to parts of 2012 and parts of 2014 WoW, why is it somehow -- what? -- profane or fickle for me to hope that they might go the step further and allow for greater connection between players, extending it in some form past one's own data center alone rather than reducing the amount of players we can group up with via CSPF, potentially splitting CS friends and statics, in the meantime? At the least, I don't see why it's somehow reprehensible for me to be a bit disappointed that I'm not going to be able to party up with certain friends just because of what is, for now, a fairly fundamental design difference.

[JunseiKei]

BDO. All one data NA/EU data center. All character and clan data is stored separately from servers. You pick the server to log in on based on whichever has best ping at that particular time. Some events and bonuses set to particular servers to draw relevant players, but generally it's just a matter of additional/excess servers being made or crunched as needed for ping, with a graduated transition of some three seconds as your server or mini-server is crunched or split.

BDO is two data centers; one for NA, one for EU. If you make a family on one, when you switch over, it'll prompt you to create a new family name, meaning it's not interchangeable as your statement would lend one to believe. The other "servers" in BDO would be called channels/realms/shards in some other games, like TERA. Adding a new channel/realm/shard isn't nearly as costly as adding a new server or data center, but is meant to split the player-base apart to avoid things like overloading the server. BDO's servers are all of the regions (Olvia, Velia, Balenos, Serendia, Mediah, Calpheon, Kamasylvia, Arsha) - they share certain chat features when you are within that server. The shards are numbered (Calpheon 1 is the first shard of the server Calpheon; Calpheon 1 to 6 will share the same server chat, but when you switch to Mediah, you stop hearing Calphone's chat and gain access to Mediah 1 to 6's instead). World chat broadcasts over the entirety of the data center.

FFXIV is devoid of the shard-server model; the server is the channel/realm/shard.

Links are what I'm greeted with when I pick between NA and EU DCs in BDO.

[Adrestia]

BDO is two data centers; one for NA, one for EU. If you make a family on one, when you switch over, it'll prompt you to create a new family name, meaning it's not interchangeable as your statement would lend one to believe. The other "servers" in BDO would be called channels/realms/shards in some other games, like TERA. Adding a new channel/realm/shard isn't nearly as costly as adding a new server or data center, but is meant to split the player-base apart to avoid things like overloading the server. BDO's servers are all of the regions (Olvia, Velia, Balenos, Serendia, Mediah, Calpheon, Kamasylvia, Arsha) - they share certain chat features when you are within that server. The shards are numbered (Calpheon 1 is the first shard of the server Calpheon; Calpheon 1 to 6 will share the same server chat, but when you switch to Mediah, you stop hearing Calphone's chat and gain access to Mediah 1 to 6's instead). World chat broadcasts over the entirety of the data center.

FFXIV is devoid of the shard-server model; the server is the channel/realm/shard.

Links are what I'm greeted with when I pick between NA and EU DCs in BDO.

This is disingenuous. The shard model (devised by Ultima Online) is literally what FFXIV has. What FFXIV calls a "server" IS a "shard." For what matter, what FFXIV calls a "datacenter" is a "cluster" or in WoW terms a "battlegroup."

In MMO terms, server/shard/realm are all literally the same thing. A logical server comprised of many physical servers that in the end give you a game world you can play on.

[Lunalepsy]

do other MMOs really not have servers (i've only played 4 in my life and everyone has them)? do they really have open world fields where you load 2000 players at the same time?

Lots of them, actually.

2.0 launched with the PF across all servers. Maybe it was early access.
It was terribly broken. I completely stopped working at times.

Mhmm, it did. Long queues because it was poorly implemented. They added the feature during open beta to test the waters.

[splinter1545]

do other MMOs really not have servers (i've only played 4 in my life and everyone has them)? do they really have open world fields where you load 2000 players at the same time?

A lot of modern MMO's just use datacenters now with one big megaserver that will split and create new server clusters when needed. I never played one that had 2k people shown at once (and doubtful there is any that is like that), but games like ESO and DoAC allowed you to see a lot of people on your screen, so it's definitely possible if the game is optimized and if the tech/hardware is there.